Dear Richard,
Re your last paragraph:
>Finally, very good call on the observation that some who oppose employee
>ranking, seem to want to justify their view by looking at the practices of
>the "Top 100" companies--who said that Americans don't do irony?
It is not that some of us oppose ranking as such, my own position is more
that we need to be quite clear on the underlying assumptions on which
ranking systems are built, and that they should refect the explicit values
and culture of the organisation.
I am not sure what you refer to by your comment on the practices of the
"Top 100" companies but anyone who appeals to such lists as rankings
should also recognise the volatile nature of membership. Is it 30 or 40%
turnover every 10 years in your Fortune 100 list? Perhaps someone can
correct me.
In addition, Arie de Guess in "Living Company" argues that organisational
survival not rank is the primary performance factor...
Finally, I seem to remember that less than 12 months ago Korea was ranked
as one of the world's leading economies. Surely whatever system produced
this ranking was/is desperately flawed and obviously did not take account
of that nation's doubtful capacity to service its huge (hidden?)
borrowings.
This is not an argument for doing away with rankings, but a salutary
warning that any ranking system will only measure what it is designed to
measure and no more. If the world changes rapidly or national/consumer
behaviour shifts, the best ranking systems can find themselves measuring
yesterday's success factors.
Philip Pogson
Philip Pogson
Manager Organisation Development Unit
University of Sydney
Margaret Telfer Building, K07
NSW 2006 Australia
ph: +61 2 9351 4218
+61 2 9351 3177 (direct)
fax: +61 2 9351 4951
Training Program URL:- http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/stafdev/
"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied
in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly."
Martin Luther King Jnr
--Philip Pogson <P.Pogson@perspolicy.usyd.edu.au>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>